China meets Hollywood in this wonderful orchestral score, a highly thematic, romantic and dramatic work that is the result of a collaboration between Chinese star composer Ye Xiaogang and up and coming American Chad Cannon. With this album, MovieScore Media explores the ever expanding Chinese film industry with the score for the 2015 war epic The Cairo Declaration (Kai luo xua yuan).

Directed by Liu Xing, the film explores one of China’s most important diplomatic moments during World War II, when Chiang Kai-shek met with American president Franklin Delano Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to coordinate military plans regarding the Pacific. The 1943 meeting serves as the backdrop to international intrigue, a story of spies and traitors, as well as a subplot featuring Mao Zedong back in his Yan’an home base.

This story steeped in tragedy is framed by set pieces of grandeur. “Red Star Over China” defines the film with its soaring melody and rich harmony. The political context is represented with a resistance theme first played in “Enemies of the Nazi Regime”; the idea reappears whenever Allied leaders are plotting their next moves. The pastoral theme for Mao’s subplot is somewhat idyllic in its portrayal of the chairman in Yan’an, the rustic Red Army headquarters – the theme first appears in “Mao and the Journalist”. Finally we have themes for the Japanese-Chinese conflict in the form of a passacaglia (repeated bass figure), which underscores the devastating aftermath of the “Assault on Chongqing” ; a secondary theme in “Spy Arrested” focuses on the psychological effects instead of the physical destruction.

Chinese composer Ye Xiaogang has a rich career in both film and concert music: his compositions include the The Song of the Earth in nine movements as well as The Twilight of the Himalayas which premiered at the opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics. Chad Cannon’s contributions to the soundtrack include work on the more action-oriented cues, given his background in the orchestration team of Conrad Pope on top Hollywood films as Godzilla (score by Alexandre Desplat) and the last two The Hobbit films (Howard Shore). Chad is also the founder of the Asia / America New Music Institute (AANMI), which promotes new music relationships between the U.S., Japan and greater Asia.